Print in Digital Clothing: The Problem with Magazine Apps

The iPad was supposed to be the saviour of magazines, but so far, most magazine apps have been “same same, but digital.” Sparksheet Design Director Charles Lim argues it’s time for designers to shed their print shackles and think digital first.

Don’t be dazzled by those flashy iPad magazine apps or digital page-turners. Creating something like the Wired iPad app may get a round of high-fives from print designers, but put it beside the web experience and it becomes decoration more than anything useful.

The mentality with most magazine apps seems to be, “Let’s make it look just like print.” After all, a tablet is roughly the same size and thickness as a print magazine, so users will use it the same way, right?

Wrong.

Technology changes the way we use things

Think about the evolution of the calendar. A printed calendar typically consists of 12 pages: new month, new page, new cute kitten image.

For added convenience, there are also miniature versions of the previous month’s and next month’s layouts, and on the back of the calendar there’s a grid of all 12.

You simply fill the boxes with content, then flip to the next page when the month is through.

Now take that static interface and translate it to a digital device. On a dynamic interface, time can be represented in a variety of ways and the content can be manipulated to suit whatever you’re interested in at that moment.

You can sort by hours, days, weeks, or months. Or you can choose to view only work appointments or your kid’s soccer games or jam sessions with your band. You don’t have to see everything at the same time.

By shifting to digital, a calendar becomes more versatile and useful than ever. And because of alerts, we don’t even have to check it anymore!

Screenshot of Klok, a time-tracking app.

So what does that have to do with magazines?

What makes a magazine is a whole other discussion, but I think we can agree that it’s not about the neat columns and colourful pages. Ultimately, it’s about the content and the experience of consuming that content.

The goal of designing magazines for the screen should be to improve the magazine experience, even if it means breaking some of the rules of print.

While the print reader is forced to move from issue to issue, page to page, column of text to column of text – next, next, next – the web reader scrolls through at her own pace and can fly off to anywhere she pleases.

There is no one direction. If there is a natural “next”, there will be an easy way to get to it, placed right where she’d expect it.

On a touchscreen tablet, swiping is so much fun that designers have started using it as a way to move to the next article (instead of the next page), transforming our conception of a magazine from a series of pages to a collection of articles.

This is a significant shift, but again, swiping is meant to mirror the way we flip through pages in a print publication. It’s still about moving forward. What if we were no longer compelled to move in a single direction at all?

The Wired magazine app includes a sentimental artifact of print design: long texts broken into columns on a screen.

What’s “next”?

The “linear to web” shift that we saw with calendars hasn’t happened yet with magazines, and won’t happen until we rethink the idea of “next.”

From radio to TV to print, the old media paradigm is all about one thing (program, ad, article) leading to another. But the web experience isn’t linear. Instead of a single thread of content it’s, well, a web.

New media already got over this hump a decade ago. A network consisting of linked web pages (you know it as the World Wide Web) really took off when users were able to easily browse and contribute to that network (Web 2.0.).

The reason this content is so nimble is because it was born digitally and is semantically formatted, not bound to a series of arbitrary separations like pages in a PDF.

How can magazines catch up? Wouldn’t you like to know!

For starters, design for the medium and stop making magazine apps that simply add a pretty layer of decoration to an existing product. Focus on the content and the experience. And don’t try to make it look like print, just because.

Great article, Charles. I’ll admit to a certain nostalgia when it comes to things like columns, and I still think they can make sense when the design is closely linked with the magazine’s brand. The New Yorker, for example, just wouldn’t feel the same with a different layout. But these examples are few and far between.

The postal strike up here in Canada forced me to read the handful of magazines I subscribe to on my iPad – and I kind of loved it. No more crumpled pages after I inevitably stuff the magazine into my backpack. No more waiting for Thursday to read the “new” issue. Makes me wonder if I should forgo my print subscription altogether.

I think magazines have the nostalgia element, but they also have the convenience element. They are always available, unlike iPad battery life (I won’t say Kindle battery life, because I could never imagine reading a magazine on one), and you don’t need the internet for full features. Lately what I like doing is reading a physical magazine, and having the iPad as a companion. to browse relevant content…I’m not sure I can explain that one.

I guess it all depends on how you’re comfortable consuming content. I too am a nostalgic print person, but I realized a while back that it wasn’t enough to satisfy my needs. That said, I still lug around my gigantic magazine collection to every place I live. The pages were obsessively flagged and noted (during design school) and so I keep them on the shelf, where they will probably stay forever.

I don’t know that magazines force users to always go to what’s “next”…I find it very easy to flick back and forth until something catches my eye. That’s why I prefer reading a paper magazine than a web version, you have to scan something like the table of contents to see what’s there, and there’s no easy way to jump around directly between articles.

The Economist iPad app is the worst example…it’s identical to a print magazine, except you really can only go “next, next, next”…it’s infuriating.

A big part of reading experience are cues. We know how to read a physical magazine, or anything print. Magazine apps are still very new, and we actually haven’t learned how to use them. Case in point, a lot of apps still tell you how to browse them. I don’t know if it is about next or not, but it seems pretty certain that we don’t know how to read the app-azine yet.

Interesting point Brain. I think there may be a significant percentage of people that actually enjoy being restricted by the limitations of print, which is why it won’t die out so easily. Contrast that with a digital platform, where through the added dimension of an infinite plane behind a viewport, the thought of a user hitting a dead end would be considered bad design.

Thanks for raising an interesting issue, Charles. I am a fan of magazines on mobile devices. The narrow columns, the serif fonts, the right to left page turning. As Dan said, it’s very reminiscent of a printed magazine. That is, unless a publisher does not scale their pages to the size of the device.

Take the Economist. Their print magazine is slightly larger than the screen of an iPad and their type small. To read the Economist on that device, I am forced to enlarge the content, pinching my way to bigger text. And this is where the illusion breaks. Swiping right to left now moves the page around. It doesn’t bring up the next page.

I hope publishers take your advice and format their print copies specifically for the screen size of the target device.

I think we should make the important distinction here though. It is the native magazine apps that fall short. In the case of online magazine websites, we can now employ techniques like responsive web design (just like Sparksheet), and have the same content retain its legibility across all platforms, no content fork required.

Here’s my thing: If I want to have a mustache-twirling Old Tyme-y experience with, say, The New York Times, I’ll go pick up a print edition of The New York Times. I’m not going to put on my topcoat and monacle so I can thumb through the Times’ content on an iPad.

Different mediums create different experiences around the same content.

Intrresting piece, thank you. One thing that a print magazine does is to push the advertising. As you flick through content you have exposure to this revenue generator. I will be much less tolerant of digital advertising and wonder how publishers will present content well without spoiling things with ads.

Still, your piece is urging us to think differently and that had to be welcomed.

You’re right, Martcol. I was speaking solely from my perspective as a designer. There is indeed a need to push advertising to readers, so we’ll have to see how publishers will generate revenue.

It’s a different discussion, and I don’t want to get too much into my opinions on the matter, but I believe in a model that has fewer, but more engaging ads or sponsorship, rather than a bunch of ads peppered throughout the experience.

Thanks for presenting a well articulated and provocative argument. I can certainly see where you’re coming fom, but I have to say I’m not convinced. The current crop of (the better) iPad magazines aren’t perfect, but they certainly provide a much better reading experience than the vast majority of news and magazine websites.

While I can’t be bothered with the bullshit page turning effect in iBooks, the overblown magazine apps that need a degree in engineering to understand the user interface, or those that require that you rotate the screen to reveal alternative content (Wired magazine and Sunday Times, I’m looking at you), there’s definitely a place for tablet-based magazines that provide a reading experience that invites you to spend some quality time with the publication, properly digesting articles, rather than quickly scanning an article before spitting it out and flitting to the next twitter link, and some of the current magazine apps provide something much closer to this than most news or magazine websites out there.

Swiping on a touch screen device is a highly intuitive way to browse and just because electronic media offers a myriad of non-linear ways to explore content that can be updated from one minute to the next doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in proucing meticulously curated periodical publications that are intended to be digested in a more ordered fashion. And just because it’s possible to feature a multitude of different types of media online doesn’t mean electronic media lacks value because it eschews the various bells and whistles in favour of good old fashioned well written prose accompanied by high quality photography.

While I reckon the already ubiquitous Adobe publishing suite is ridiculously over priced and doesn’t necessarily result in the most optimal results being produced, it does provide an easy route for publishers to gain their first foothold in electronic / online publishing in a way that lets them experiment a little with new ways to present content that can only lead to better things developing a little further down the line.

I’ll refer you to the recent Mono.Kultur iPad app; while I don’t feel the vertically paged content works awfully well, through the browsing interface, design and use of video, audio and imagery, it provides a wonderfully immersive and atmospheric reading experience of a breed that is a million miles away from ANY magazine website I have yet encountered. (It’s a free download, so there’s no excuse not to have a look).

I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement, but we’re only just beginning to explore the new possibilities offered by touch screen tablet publishing and I reckon some of the current ipad magazines provide a great starting point for the next generation of electronic and online publications.

Great comment, David. I think we are on the same page about how the current magazine apps suck, but I think we disagree on how to improve them.

I’m all for exploring the new possibilities on a touchscreen tablet, but the majority of magazine apps have failed by willfully ignoring lessons we’ve learned over the past decade designing for screens. I’m not even talking about the Egghead ‘interactive’ magazines from the nineties, or the unwarranted use of Flash that litters the web, but fundamental things like multiple columns of text on a screen and how they just don’t make any sense at all.

I agree that not all users need to have all the bells and whistles to enjoy their reading experience, but let’s not forget that some of these features are an integral part of the users’ expectations, not unlike the way many people found this article, or the way you and I are discussing it right now.

In the case of proprietary tools, I feel like while Adobe certainly has some good intentions, I worry that they may actually be doing a disservice to print publishers by encouraging them to continue with their end-product, and steering them away from the open web and its standards. Some publishers can’t resist the seemingly-easy solution, and are then stuck with an expensive PDF reader tailored for just one device (albeit the best one).

Also thanks for referring the Mono.Kultur iPad app. I will definitely check it out.

I think one of the problems is that we still have these out of date print dinosaurs desperately trying to run a magazine’s digital strategy. People who are out of touch with the web and stuck in a 1950s black-hole of mediocrity. We can only hope they will all soon be dying off of stress heart attacks.

Thanks for the comment, Brent. While I agree that some publishers’ thinking is backwards, I do think there’s still room for everyone and that it’s not too late. It’s also partly up to the proponents of web standards to help communicate the benefits to the non-digital folks.

Charles, while you raise an interesting point, you have not made a case for what you feel should be next … saying “wouldn’t you like to know” isn’t a particularly valid or constructive point of view.

I own an iPad, and while I agree that the bulk of the magazines that I have looked at on there are not taking advantage of the medium, there are examples of magazines enriching their print content with additional features. Take a look at the Esquire iPad app — you can download back issues for free — and see how they have created a live video version of their cover, enhanced certain features (such as the “funny joke from a beautiful woman” FOB piece with video shot during the photo shoot and outtakes of jokes not used in the print medium, or how they feature 360 degree photography on their men’s fashion shots). That’s driving the print version farther online.

Is there room to improve? Of course there is. But just because the tablet provides the designer with the ability to re-create the typographic identity of the magazine on the tablet does not mean that isn’t a big stride forward from viewing the magazine online.

Speaking from the point of view of someone who has decades of experience in the print medium as both a designer and as a journalist and an editor, I’d rather hear you make a coherent argument about how you think the calendar analogy can actually be applied to existing magazine content than just saying that no one has pushed it any farther to date.

Thanks for the comment, Vic. The Esquire magazine app is exactly the kind of offender I describe in my article. Those ‘features’ you mention are merely a novel layer of decoration slopped onto a print product. I’m not faulting Esquire for at least exploring these types of things, but I’d argue that before trying to push forward, at least take heed of what the short history of designing for screens has taught us.

My “Wouldn’t you like to know” statement was in jest since the iPad is so new, and many magazines may be unsure of how to approach it. While I don’t know what approaches will work with 100% success, a winner will focus on content and maintainability, rather than pretty animations. I’ll refer to New York magazine’s The Cut fashion app, which focuses on a single topic that the magazine brand does exceptionally well, and packages it into an experience that feels good on an iPad.

Regarding the calendar analogy and how it can be applied to magazine content, think Flipboard or Zite, i.e. the web. Hope that helps.

Hi Charles – great article. I know you wrote it a while back but it seems not much has changed since…I would say it has gotten worse. More and more decoration and a proliferation of ‘print in digital clothing’. Which means that we must be close to a major change. I did a small sampling of how customers like those 1.0 content apps and saw that even the biggest house-hold names such as Wired, Martha Stewart etc get 3 out of 5 stars. It is not the content which getting negative feedback, it is the experience. Thank you for this article – super.

Yes, I feel that this will be a long battle for publishers and it won’t be easily won until they are ready to move away from their print infrastructure, like charging for distribution and preserving the idea of a “page.” Until they attempt to make their content digitally ubiquitous across platforms, we’ll continue to see printed versions retrofitted into an increasing number of screen sizes.

Nice points Charles. Thank you for the article and I agree in principle that a digital magazine should be so much more than a flip-book.

Your point that what makes a magazine “ultimately, it’s about the content and the experience of consuming that content” is not completely removed from the “neat columns and colorful pages.”

As you well know the latter two are some of the elements used in print to create the ‘experience of consuming that content’, and across magazines in general there’s a great variety in the columns and colorful pages — which is why people find some magazines personally more useful, informative, quicker to read, enjoyable, etc. than others.

Now, back to agreeing with you on the next, next, next problem; one reason for the continued use of that model in the digital space is revenue. I once asked a Zinio representative why they didn’t have a table of contents UI option like Texterity and after a bit of hem and humming he said it was “to preserve the magazine experience” which then was admitted to mean keep readers browsing past the ad pages as they moved though the publication.

To break from the page-flip model a publication needs to have other ad models in place and be able to convert their advertisers to that new model. Let’s face it, flip a page to an ad page and the reader’s screen fills up with that advertiser’s message just like the advertiser is used to in their print buy. I’m not saying that can’t be bettered with floating ads, banners, and other options I don’t even know about, but a full screen page of an advertiser’s message easy to understand, and not something an advertiser wants to get skipped over by a reader who can “fly off to anywhere she pleases.”

I’m always searching for examples of digital magazines done right — where the ability to fly off to anywhere I please doesn’t give me the feeling of being lost in the publication and I can still know when I’ve read the entire issue. Call me old school, but I think there’s something to that last point — that feeling you ‘reached the end’ got your money’s worth out of that issue.

And maybe that’s just a hold over from a reader used to a monthly magazine as well. Reaching the end of an issue brings a sense of completion.

I would disagree with the notion that consuming magazine content needs to be in multiple columns set in pages for it to be useful. While, yes, this works for print, there is no reason to be limited to a page’s static dimensions. The consistent size of printed pages are a great way to present a variety of ‘pages’, but of course there’s much more variety on a digital screen. Not to mention the growing variety of screen sizes.

You’re correct on the “next, next, next” problem being tied to ad revenue. Unless there’s innovation in advertising, we’ll be stuck with this ‘page’ paradigm. As technology improves, however, it’s going to get a lot tougher for this model to survive. Digital empowers people, and while we can force users to traverse an ad we threw in their path, there will be even more ways for them to consume the magazine content when and how they want. Books have already made this leap. Since the rising standard of epub, it doesn’t matter how you read (or listened to) a book, the same way it doesn’t matter what device you heard a song on.

For some examples of digital magazines done right, I like Marco Arment’s The Magazine, which essentially strips all overhead costs associated with print. I also like TNW’s magazine, whose content is published online anyway but served up in a nice little package just for iOS users.

[…] The display takes advantage of the touchscreens on tablets and smartphones, allowing users to “flip” through the content in much the same way they would their favourite magazine (without resorting to skeuomorphism or shoehorning print design into digital clothing) […]

[…] The iPad was supposed to be the saviour of magazines, but so far, most magazine apps have been “same same, but digital.” Sparksheet Design Director Charles Lim argues it’s time for designers to she… […]

[…] In addition, Sparksheet is nominated for its first Eddie, Folio magazine’s award for international excellence in magazine editorial. Sparksheet is a finalist for Best Online Column or Blog (B-to-B) for Sparksheet Creative Director Charles Lim’s popular column “Print in Digital Clothing: The Problem with Magazine Apps.” […]

[…] a classic print-to-web problem. The paper expected that people would obediently seek out and start with the homepage, just as they […]

About the Author

Charles Lim is the Digital Director of Spafax and Sparksheet. He comes from a mostly graphic design background, and is an aficionado of video games and pop culture. His personal site is at chedonline.com.